Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses supporters in Istanbul on May 28.
Türkiye's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is competing with opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu in a runoff vote held two weeks after neither of them met the 50% threshold needed to win the election in their first attempt.
According to Türkiye's Anadolu news agency, the results from 97% of the ballot boxes opened showed that Mr. Erdogan received 52.1% of the vote, defeating his opponent Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who won 47.9%. Turkey's Supreme Election Commission is the body that will announce the official results.
The election will decide not only who leads Türkiye, a NATO member of 85 million people, but also the direction of its economy amid a sharp fall in the value of the lira, as well as Ankara's foreign and defense policies after a rift with the West.
Despite the polls, Erdogan, 69, who has led Türkiye for two decades, led his rival by nearly five percentage points in the first round of voting on May 14. A victory on May 28 would allow him to stay in power for another five years and preside over events marking the 100th anniversary of modern Türkiye in October.
Mr Kilicdaroglu, 74, is the candidate of a six-party opposition alliance and leader of the Republican People's Party (CHP), founded by Türkiye's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. His coalition struggled to gain momentum after the first round of voting.
Qatar's Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán congratulated Erdoğan on his election. In a Twitter post, Emir al-Thani called Erdogan his "brother" and wished him success in his new term. Meanwhile, also on Twitter, Orban hailed the Turkish president's "unquestionable victory."
Speaking to supporters in his hometown of Istanbul on the evening of May 28, Mr Erdogan declared victory. “We have completed the second round of elections with the support of the people… We will govern the country for the next five years,” Al Jazeera quoted the leader as saying. He also declared that all 85 million people of Türkiye were “victors”.
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